1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to Service Component Architecture (SCA) and more particularly to methods for service component qualifiers in a Service Component Architecture.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Service Component Architecture (SCA) is a specification put forward by software vendors with the objective of simplifying how organizations create and implement applications in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SCA is included in the SOA Programming Model along with Service Data Objects (SDO), which allow heterogeneous data to be accessed and manipulated in a uniform manner.
An SCA is based on service components which may be configured to provide services, consume other services, or both. These service components may be packaged together with import components and export components into SCA modules, and communicate with one another using SCA messages. The import and export components define a module's external interfaces or access points. These import and export components typically require binding information, which specifies the means of transporting data to and from the SCA modules. For example, the import and export components of SCA modules may be used to access or provide services to external systems or services over various transport protocols, such as IIOP, HTTP, SOAP, and JMS.
The service interface between two communicating service components may require exchange of certain information. In addition, the runtime environments that execute the SCA components may need to exchange certain information related to the quality and expectations for the communications and/or service. Existing component models, such as Java 2 Platform enterprise edition (J2EE) or .NET™ are limited to exchanging quality information at the interface level, rather than at the service level, and extensibility of definitions of quality information is not available.
From the foregoing discussion, it should be apparent that a need exists for an apparatus, system, and method for service component qualifiers for quality of service in component execution at different levels in the SOA architecture. Beneficially, such an apparatus, system, and method would be flexible enough to be able to define additional quality of service requirements with which components should be executed. This should be possible without the requirement to change the implementation of a component. Additionally, a user should be allowed to define new service qualifiers if need arises. The attachment of qualifiers should also not be limited to just the interfaces of components.